Midterms Live Desk: Election Night, Checked

For election night I built a live tracker: elections.aletterz.com. It follows the Senate, House and governor races as results come in, along with the news around them: polling-place problems, court fights, and claims that need checking. It’s temporary and comes down a couple of days after the election.

What you’ll see

A map at the top. Switch between Senate, Governors and House, and between four views:
- Before tonight: who holds each seat going in, for all 50 states.
- Live count: who is ahead in the count right now. In nine states (Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina and Ohio) you can tap in and see every county. South Carolina and West Virginia join automatically once their states publish results.
- Projections: every network projection, including ones only a single desk has made, labeled as such.
- Called: only races the AP or at least two network decision desks have called.
Control of each chamber, with seats counted only once they’re called.
Irregularities: equipment failures, moved polling places, extended hours, lawsuits and threats, each marked critical, warning or info, with what officials have said.
Developments: the rest of the day’s election news, a poll-closing clock, and a board of every race.

How it decides what to show

Everything carries a label, so you can see how solid it is:

Verified means at least two independent outlets report it. Single source means one so far. Conflict means sources disagree, and both versions are shown. Corrected means an earlier item turned out wrong and has been fixed in place.
A race shows as called only when the AP or two network desks have called it. Nothing is called from vote counts.
County numbers come straight from each state’s election office, not from news reports. They’re the state’s unofficial election-night count, like every result tonight.
Claims of fraud or misconduct appear only when a credible outlet reports them. They’re credited to whoever made them, never stated as fact, and shown next to what election officials said. Reports that can’t be traced to a credible source are listed separately as not confirmed.
Every item links to its sources.

Who does the work

I want to be upfront about this: the news side is gathered by an AI research assistant (Claude), running on a small server at my house. Every 10 to 15 minutes it reads live coverage and official sources and updates the tracker under strict written rules, the ones above.

It doesn’t publish directly. A separate, plain program checks every update before it goes out, and refuses anything that looks wrong: impossible numbers, a race marked called without two desks, or text that looks like an attempt to manipulate an AI. Text like that is held back for me to review and never appears on the page. Links only go to known news outlets and official sites.

It can still be late or wrong. It’s a tracker, not an official source.

What it can’t do

County detail isn’t available everywhere. Some states block automated access to their results sites, some only post web pages or PDFs, some have no statewide feed at all, and New England reports by town rather than by county. The page lists every state that’s missing, with the reason and a link to that state’s official results.
No forecasts or win probabilities. Only counts, calls and reported news.

The basics

The page itself sets no cookies, runs no ads and loads nothing from other sites.
It’s not affiliated with any campaign, party, news outlet or election office.
Official results come from your state’s election office, and they’re certified in the days and weeks after tonight. If anything on the tracker differs from your state’s official results, the state is right.

Follow along at elections.aletterz.com.